EUCLID, Ohio — There's probably never been a high-school state tournament basketball game that ended with both teams sharing the center circle, all 50 or so hands in for the same breakdown, with players from both teams sharing hugs, smiles and relieved sighs.
There's probably never been a high-school basketball tournament game quite like the one Chardon and Madison High Schools played just outside of Cleveland on Thursday night.
Eighty-four hours after a 17-year old gunman allegedly opened fire in the Chardon High School cafeteria Monday morning, killing three students and wounding two others, neighboring schools and longtime rivals came together to provide both a badly needed distraction and an opportunity for anyone who wanted to mourn and honor the victims.
If nothing else, Thursday's game was just a chance for everybody involved to let it all out, whether "it" was energy, sweat, screams or tears. The kind of dedicated Chardon crowd that usually shows up for football games came to a basketball game, came early and stayed all the way through.
Chardon gradually pulled away and won the game, 78-59 — not that many of the more than 1,500 in the gym cared who won or by how many.
"They got to be kids tonight," Chardon athletic director Doug Snyder said. "That was important."
The Chardon student section showed up en masse, all wearing red. Most of the 250 or so Chardon students in attendance dressed in their ordinary "Chardon Crazies" gear, but a few sported specially made red T-shirts featuring a black remembrance ribbon.
The students wore body paint and bounced on the bleachers before tipoff, just like they always do. The pregame moment of silence, the national anthem that featured both teams at midcourt locking arms and the weeklong goodwill gestures that allowed the game to go on were among the many things that were different.
For 90 or so minutes, though, different was good. Therapeutic, powerful and good.
The game only went on after much discussion, much shuffling and much understanding by those in position to help.
With Chardon's school closed off by authorities, the team came to Euclid to practice the last two days. Madison was among the first schools to offer help and support, and 20 minutes before Thursday's game Madison took the floor wearing black warmups and T-shirts with "Chardon" across the chest. Confused workers at the scorer's table, thinking Madison was Chardon, tried to wave the players to the opposite end. The Madison players waved back, confirming that they were in the right place. For one night, everybody was on the same team.
If there was a right way to handle such a thing, to keep some semblance of focus on the basketball task at hand while maintaining a proper perspective, Chardon did it.
Madison did, too.
The sectional tournament game originally was scheduled for Monday night but was immediately postponed after the Monday morning shootings. When Madison's players gathered after school Monday for their unplanned practice, coach Patrick Moran said they were "pretty much numb."
All of them know students at Chardon. They hadn't been barricaded in classrooms Monday morning like most of Chardon's players had, but they asked the same questions. Why? How? What if?
The game was not only the first Chardon athletic event to be held since the shootings but the first community event that wasn't a vigil. Chardon students were allowed in the school Thursday with their parents for the first time since Monday. Classes resume Friday morning.
Chardon High School has about 1,100 students and is the centerpiece of a town of a little more than 5,000 that sits 30 miles east of Cleveland. It's a place that's been rocked by unthinkable tragedy but also united by it; when the student section wasn't going through one of its choreographed routines Thursday night, it was chanting "One heartbeat."
"We just needed this tonight, to get out and let it out," Chardon senior and student section rooter Zach Barry said. "It's been like this all week. Not loud and wild like this, but all of us just getting together, just wanting to be around our friends and our classmates and feel like we can get through this together."
The game started slowly, with Chardon missing its first five shots. Chardon coach Nick Gustin joked that he and his staff figured the first shot might hit the scoreboard given the nerves and circumstances, so that was victory. With Chardon leading by five points just before halftime, senior Nick Ruckel shot a 3-pointer that hit the rim, bounced in the air and then somehow bounced back in and through as the buzzer expired.
"We knew we were Darth Vader coming in here tonight," Moran said.
Maybe Ruckel getting that bounce was a sign, maybe it wasn't. Chardon quickly extended the lead to 15 after halftime only to see Madison quickly trim it back to eight. Then Chardon answered, then the rout was on.
"It really wasn't about basketball tonight," Ruckel said.
The cheerleaders from both schools cheered together in the second half, and after Chardon pulled away Gustin addressed both teams and saluted fans on both sides.
For the sake of both curiosity and compassion, folks from communities besides Chardon and Madison came out, too. That's common at tournament time but not for a weeknight sectional game between teams with a combined record of 13-27. This one was different from the start and different all the way through.
Whatever normalcy was in the gym was represented in rapper Lil Wayne screaming whatever he screams over the speakers during pregame warmups and the Chardon students' energy throughout the game. They played basketball, too — eventually, anyway — and folks on both sides gave multiple standing ovations.
Emotions flowed through the pregame ceremonies. As the players shared hugs after the national anthem and dispersed back toward their respective benches, Gustin picked up his 3-year-old son, Nicholas, and held him close as he walked back toward the Chardon bench. He tried to fight back tears, and after a moment he did.
"It was spontaneous," Nick Gustin said of hugging his son. "It just seemed like the right thing to do."
